Thursday, September 15, 2011

Twenty-First Century Pastoral Nightmares

As my time at my current congregation comes to a close in...what...ten days, I find that the transition is stirring my subconscious. I'm having the Pastor Stress Dream.

You probably know the student stress dream, where you show up for class...but you haven't studied...and there's a test...and you're inexplicably dressed in a powdered British barrister's wig and a rhinestone studded halter top.

Or maybe that last one's just me.

I got over that years ago, as scholastic achievement ceased to be something that stressed me out. When those dreams tried to surface, I'd just walk out of the class. Or kick back and relax. I knew I wasn't in school. No problem, dude.

But worship? I care about worship. It matters. And so my subconscious has glommed onto that as a way of manifesting my anxieties.

A night or so ago, I dreamt I was trying to lead worship in a new place. The problem wasn't that I'd forgotten my sermon. I can swing that and improvise. I was wearing pants, which is always a plus. Everyone wasn't a zombie.

It was that...in my dream...I couldn't get my iPhone to access the text I was supposed to read.

I stood there, clicking through...and it was always the wrong page. And then it wouldn't scroll. And then it shut down, and started up again, as I tried to talk and joke my way through the technical difficulty in front of a surprisingly patient congregation.

In. A. Dream.

I think, perhaps, that I need to spend less time with my little magic devil box.